I want to push, but what’s the point? I can’t search for you with a crowd gathered. I need to come back when everyone is gone.
“Hi again.” Clementine appears at my elbow. I shift away in surprise, but then I remember she is on your list.
“Where’s Jed?” Your mother asks again. It’s unclear who she’s asking.
“I think I saw him heading down.” Clementine’s smile stretches between her ears. “He was looking at the ducks.”
“Looking at ducks? Has he lost his mind?” An image comes to mind, of me unearthing a doll from the blackberry patch; maybe he’s not the only one. “I said five thirty. Didn’t I say five thirty?” Again, it’s unclear who she is talking to. Clem and I both scan the room for her target audience.
“Why don’t we start setting the food out? I’m sure he’ll be here just in time for the prayer,” Clem says brightly.
Your mom’s face sours, but she hisses, “Whatever.” Then she stalks to your father. “Get off the computer and help!”
I take up a tray of smashed potatoes. Clementine smiles gratefully. “You know, I’d still love you to come to my class.”
“I’d be happy to.”
She is taken aback by my sudden change of heart. “Oh, okay, great,” she says, and I wonder if she is one of those people who make offers to sound nice. “What about Friday?” I guess not.
“I’d have to check with Addy.” My stomach does a little flip. Your mother will never agree to this; she doesn’t want me to leave. But I don’t need her permission. I don’t need anyone’s permission, and I wish I didn’t have to remind myself of that every time I do something someone else doesn’t like.
“I can check with her,” Clementine offers, and I want to hug her. She knows I am afraid, and she is helping me. Her daughters join us. “Asha and Aya hoped you would be here,” she says like they are one thing. “We’ve been talking about you all week.” I don’t know how that can be. They barely know me. Surely, they can’t know enough to fill a single conversation, let alone a week’s worth. But I also realize that out here, the littlest things can be magnified, become an obsession.
“Where’d you get that shirt?” Aya asks me.
“Your grandmother.”
“Told you,” Asha snaps, and sticks out her tongue.
“Help,” Clementine orders, mom-style, and they pick up the hot plates with square pads.
I carry the potatoes out through the living room. Asha and Aya step in on either side of me. “We want to watch you talk to her class,” Asha says quickly. “Tell our mom.” And then they both go out ahead of me, their long skirts swirling in sync.
As I pass the stairwell, my eyes drift upward. I want to go up there—maybe I can ask to see the house? I wonder what your room looks like now that you’re gone. Have your parents preserved it? Would knowing that tell me what they really think happened to you? If your bedroom has been preserved, would that mean they expect you back, or could it mean they have left it as a shrine?
Clementine comes back in and finds me. “It’s a beautiful house, isn’t it? Addy hand carved the sconces.”
“Yeah, it’s amazing. Do you think maybe I could go upstairs?”
Clementine blinks in alarm. “Why?”
“I just thought it might be fun to see, you know, what they’ve done with it.”
“Addy’s kind of a private person. But you’re welcome to come see our house anytime!” Clementine is nice. Maybe I can trust her. Maybe she is a better choice than Jed, who appears right then with one leg soaked with mud past his ankle, looking like he really has lost his mind.
We haven’t talked since Sunday night, when it took us well over two hours to walk back to the ranch. Over two hours not speaking, as the forest rattled with nighttime sounds, angry calls that chilled me to the bone. Not a single car passed, and I wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing or a curse. Would someone have offered us a ride, or would they have played chicken, tried to run us off the road? When we were finally about to cross the highway to the ranch, a semitruck appeared. Jed laughed in spite of himself, caught my eye and shook his head. But once we crossed the road, the spell was broken, and he walked me to my door and left without saying good night.
Your mother is incensed by his late arrival. “Where have you been? We’ve all been waiting.”
“I thought I’d go swimming,” he says. Asha and Aya giggle frantically and each slaps a hand on the chair between them.
“Jed, sit here!” They say in unison.
“I got a tattoo.” Asha slides up her sleeve to reveal her wrist.
“It’s fake,” Aya butts in. “When are we gonna go shooting?”
Even the women from the church seem to perk up in his presence. Only your mother bristles.
We pray and then we eat. The food is rich and it goes down heavy. Your brother and Clementine are quiet, keeping their heads bowed over their plates, breaking their silence only to exclaim over your mother’s food, your mother’s garden, your mother’s ranch. Elodie and Geraldine, who work at the ranch every summer, sing even heavier praises to your mother, marveling at what a strong woman, what a good cook, what an inspiration she is, like she is royalty, like they are lucky to be hosted on her land, in her kingdom.
But every time she leaves the table, every time her back is turned, their faces droop, their shoulders sag and they look like loan sharks tallying up debts. I think of Moroni, the way he praised your mother to the sky, then called her a witch behind her back. I think of what the man on the street told me, that first day in Happy Camp: We take bets. On how long you all will last.
I can understand why they don’t like her; she is a tough woman to like. But they also rely on her. There are not a lot of opportunities in Happy Camp. The surroundings are so beautiful that sometimes the poverty catches you off guard. Elodie and Geraldine wear the same dresses they wore to church. Sitting across from them, I can see that what I thought were patterns are actually the kind of sweat stains that never go away. The darkness of their hairlines comes from the dirt caked underneath. And even though Addy’s food tastes like fertilizer and is probably loaded with herbal remedies not approved by the FDA, they still eat all of it.
In a place like this, Addy is glamorous, a queen. And I wonder if that’s why she stays, even if she claims to hate it. The truth is, I can’t imagine her anyplace else.
All through dinner I prickle with the need to mention you. I try to think of ways to bring you into the conversation without drawing attention.
Your daughters are beautiful, Clementine. Addy, what about your daughter?
Homer, what was it like growing up here? What was it like growing up with your sister?
But instead I eat you mother’s food and feel light-headed in the fresh air. Whenever I’m asked a question, I say, Yes, yes, I love it here. Yes, I’m so lucky to be here. Yes, yes, yes until all I want is to run, run to the perimeter and cross it, cross it so I can breathe and see the forest and the trees.
The girls buzz around Jed, so enthusiastic that it exhausts me, makes me wonder if I ever had that much energy, and why I never used it for anything good. For his part, Jed is polite but distracted. Every time our eyes meet over the table, it feels like an accident.
“I better get back.” He pushes out his chair, and everyone at the table moves at once, like he has broken the spell.
“I made dessert,” Addy says. Everyone looks from Addy to Jed.
“It is getting late,” I say, which your mother doesn’t like.
Jed gets unsteadily to his feet, like it is physically difficult to leave her table. “Thank you for dinner.”
“You’ll stay for dessert, or you’ll be rude.” The table is quiet. I think oddly of the gun at her hip, as if she will shoot him for leaving; that is how thickly her will is imposed on everything. It’s like she has brought a glass dome to the table and we are
all trapped inside it and I think of what you said—It was the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t escape—and I wonder if you meant from her, how you said, The Murder of Dee Dee Blanchard: I get that. I get that so much.
Jed and your mother lock eyes. I think she wants him to fight her. You said she liked strong people. I think she misses you. You were strong and now you’ve vanished and all that’s left, the only people for her to play with, are broken and lost.
Jed takes a deep breath and sinks back into his chair.
Your mother brings out brownies, which are her own special recipe. “The secret,” she informs us, “is the hot sauce.” She pours it over each brownie as she serves it, so hot that the brownies collapse, leaving gaping holes. And the chorus begins.
There is nothing like overpraising food for turning it to mud in your mouth.
* * *
—
Dinner finishes and Jed escapes, stalking along the main path to the other side of the ranch. Everyone watches him go. Your mother shakes her head. “That man is up to no good.” Elodie and Geraldine hurry in to placate her.
“Your dinner was amazing.”
“The dessert was top-notch.”
Clementine is taking the dishes back to the kitchen. I follow her, through the house with the glowing white Christ statue, the slick black piano. It’s quiet in the kitchen, a hollow where the echoes can collect. I want to ask her about you right then and there, but someone could come in at any moment, so I say, “Friday?”
She gasps at my voice, surprised that she is not alone. “Yes.” She smiles her useful smile. “Don’t worry about Addy. I’ll work it out with her.”
I glance toward the living room. My words gather in my throat, then all run out almost at once. “I wanted to tell you something; it’s about Rachel.”
She catches my eyes. “Not here,” she says, and I don’t know why. Her eyes are wide, and then she passes into the shadow of the hallway so I can’t read her face.
Homer appears suddenly, coming from outside, and moves in beside her. “There you are.” He is so casually handsome, like the lead in a Hallmark movie, and he slides his arms around her waist, kisses the tendon on her neck.
“Sorry,” she says to him. “Just trying to help your mother.” She takes his hand and presses it, like she’s ensuring their connection, and then she moves on to the kitchen, leaving him with me.
“Well, hello,” he says like we haven’t been sitting across from each other for the past hour. He leans easily on the counter, crosses his arms. “We really enjoyed you at church.” Church people say the weirdest things.
“Um, yeah, it was really interesting.”
“We don’t have a lot of people in our congregation. We used to have more.” Like that might convince me to come back.
“It was really fun.” The more I say it, the less we both believe it.
“I hope you’ll come again.”
“Of course.” I have no intention of ever going again. I glance quickly, into the dark living room, then say, “Did Rachel go to church?”
“Rachel?” Like he’s trying to place her. “No.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yes.” He scratches his neck, like his mask itches. “Rachel and I were very different. I believe in forgiveness.” What wouldn’t you forgive? “I believe people can change.”
“That’s nice,” I say.
“I think so.”
We finish cleaning up, and your mother loads me down with leftovers, dry, papery food so dense, it feels like dumbbells in my hands. I pass through the group, saying goodbye. I feel the uncomfortable burr of loneliness, thinking about going back to the staff cabin, the stink and the stuffiness, when your mother’s house is so clean and cheerful.
I say goodbye to your mother, your father, your brother, your nieces, Elodie and Geraldine. Clementine is waiting by the door. She moves in to hug me, then tilts her head so she can speak into my ear. A thrill runs up my spine; I think she will finally tell me something important.
“Do you feel safe here?” she says instead.
“Yes.”
She pulls away. “Okay.” Then she follows her family out to the car. I watch them leave from the shadows and wonder why she thinks I wouldn’t feel safe.
Episode 45:
The Queen of the Flies
The compound was stationed close to the PCT, on the border of California and Oregon. At the height of the summer, the cult members would drive out to the trailhead and wait for hikers to pass by, exhausted and half crazed with hunger. They wouldn’t take just anyone. They targeted women, women who traveled alone. They drove them to the compound, where they offered them a feast. They let them eat their fill and then they feasted on their flesh.
As I walk back to my cabin, my stomach roils with your mother’s food, which is like nothing I have ever tasted before, like she invented a new cuisine. I tell myself there is no reason to believe it’s going to make me sick, that I’m not the only one who ate it, but then I think of the bottles lined up in the greenhouse: the reeds like hair, the white slices of fish bones. Surely your mother would know better than to put something like that in her food?
I wander through the ranch with the lights out, so the guest cabins cower, the horses move like phantoms in the shadows. I feel like I am running out of time, like I am an hourglass with a hole at the bottom, emptying, with no chance of turning it all around. It’s not a feeling that is specific to you, although this time you are at the heart of it.
It’s the first night I have noticed the stars, and I gaze up as I walk slowly toward my cabin. There is a blanket of them, wildly flecked, like paint splatters across the sky, and I regret that I didn’t see them before.
I wonder how I got here. How I’m over thirty and, instead of living, I’m disappearing. The idea of life has always been, I thought, that as you got older, your life multiplied, that you became bigger and bigger, more and more, not less. But I think about you (Missing? Murdered? Conspiracy?) and I realize the place I thought I was going, the place I thought we were all going, has scattered like the stars away from us.
I walk along the duck pond; I can see the rough battle of Jed’s feet, diving in and out of the water. I observe the thin layer of surface, and I fantasize about finding your skull, wish so hard I can almost see it glimmer, see your crystal bones. Like the bones of Lynn Messer found in an open field two years after she went missing. Lying out in a cow pasture, and nobody saw her, search parties and police dogs, even her own family—for years. And her husband remarried and her kids’ heads spun and her body was out there with the cows, drying in the sun, rotting in the dark, and no one noticed. I won’t let that happen to you. I won’t leave your bones waiting.
My stomach lurches. You are out here somewhere. Are you drowning in the water or are you baking in the sun and why does nobody care? Why is nobody looking? Why has everyone accepted your vanishing? Why don’t you matter? Why don’t we matter? Because the truth is, Rachel, growing up out here in a population of four, you are just as missed as I would be, solved like a problem that could never be fixed any other way: She disappeared.
She was crazy, she was a bitch, she was alone. You never fit, and so you make more sense as a mystery, a disappearance. And maybe that’s why I was drawn to you in the first place. Maybe we always knew that we would disappear and no one would care; maybe that was why we cared so much about the people who disappeared before us.
I reach into my pocket and take out your list. What is the secret? What is the tie between the names? Four girls, four girls who used to be friends. Four girls who haven’t been friends for a long time.
I follow the perimeter of the lake, still looking for your bones. I pass by the promised pet cemetery, tucked under a tree. Names are scrawled on homemade tombstones: Lulu, Gigi, Grace. And in front of Grace’s, a bundle of discordant wildflowers. I shiver in su
rprise. Isn’t that Jed’s wife’s name? Maybe the family pet shared the name. Maybe Grace, in the week that she was here, made a grave for herself, for fun?
The ground drops out from under me. Bile rises in my throat. I think of Jed’s muddy boot. He was up here, leaving flowers. Maybe he made a headstone for his own wife, but why? And then it strikes me: What if she never left? What if Jed was lying? But it doesn’t make sense, that he would murder her, then bury her out in the open, where anyone could see—but then, who would see? Who would ever know but your mother and your father? What if they are all in on it, everyone at that dinner party? And my stomach lurches, and I hear Addy tell me, We’re so happy you’re here and Homer say, Rachel and I were very different—“were,” past tense, like he knows you are never coming back. What if they are all planning to kill me? I think how easy it would be, to pluck people off, out here, in the middle of nowhere, in Apathy County, where no one cares.
I move away from the river, following Jed’s weird footpath until it disappears on the packed dirt road. I almost trip over another dead cat, stretched long across the path, like it was flying, like it fell from the sky. I hear a strangled call and look up. I search for the vultures—do vultures sleep, or do they just circle? Do they feed off the sleep of the dead?
Up ahead, I see the greenhouse glitter in the dark, a mirror for the moon. I feel the witchy food turn in my stomach, and I brace myself against a tree, cough once, then watch it pour out of me.
It looks the same on the ground as it did on the plate, and then I hear heavy panting, the trot of footsteps, see the glint of yellow nighttime eyes, and your mother’s dogs appear, surround me like a pack of wolves. They approach slowly. I call to them but they ignore me. They gather at my feet, and then they lap up my vomit from the ground.
* * *
—
The next morning, I finish feeding the horses and arrive back at the tack room to find Jed saddling two horses.
“Addy said I could take you up to Eagle Rock today,” he says, lifting a saddle onto Jewel’s back. “It’s the all-day trail for advanced riders. Probably take all morning, if you want to bring a sandwich or something.” He doesn’t look me in the eye. I think of the grave in the pet cemetery.
If I Disappear Page 13